Since I didn't go to Comic-Con this year, I had to enjoy the show vicariously through the blogosphere. My favorite report so far has been this morning's report from Tom Spurgeon at the Comics Reporter. Tom is funny, trenchant, critical, constructive, and his piece elicits the only appropriate reaction possible from such a piece: it simultaneously makes me sorry I missed it and grateful for the chance to enjoy the gorgeous Seattle summer. This quote in particular, about Gary Groth accepting on behalf of several cartoonists at the Eisner Awards, made me laugh: "Gary also always spoke in terms of the privilege of working with the artists in question. He was terrific, and made me feel good about working in comics... My point is, when a professional agitator like Gary is the classiest, most reverential guy in the room, you know comics has some issues."

Speaking of Gary, I loved this pic/caption from the Drawn & Quarterly blog this morning:  

I was also grateful for Heidi MacDonald's liveblogging from the Eisners on Friday night to further help me through my Comic-Con DTs this weekend. I'm still pissed I missed Samuel L. Jackson. 

Drew Friedman's latest masterpiece. Maybe W. can step in for the sequel. Visit VanityFair.com for a larger version. 

Jules Feiffer is this week's feature Onion A.V. Club interview, and it's a doozy! The 1,200 word teaser is in this week's issue, or you can read the expanded version here.  

Every day in July we're spotlighting books from our month-long Hidden Gems Sale, wherein we're featuring some of our under-the-radar backlist titles and encouraging you to try them by offering them at a nice discount of 25% off!

The subject of today's spotlight, Penny Van Horn, cut her teeth in the Weirdo and Twisted Sister anthologies.

Recipe for Disaster

"The secret was revealed to me by Carl Jung, and was further illuminated by Sigmund Freud, Herman Hesse, Patti Smith, David Bowie, and Sylvia Plath. Laugh if you must at this cast of characters, but at this ripe intersection in my life, their combination became my personal recipe for disaster..." So begins Van Horn's amazing graphic novella, a collection of short stories and vignettes, mostly autobiographical, part mystical exploration, depicting incidents from the author's life, as well as those of her friends, neighbors and relatives. The title story is an intense autobiographical account of her nervous breakdown which is alternately riotous and terrifying. Van Horn uses her trademark painstaking scratchboard style for every page, giving the book a shockingly intense visual look.

88-page black & white 8" x 11" softcover
regularly $9.95 • ON SALE $7.46
Order Now

In which Popeye rules over Popilania and demands respeck.

Just a Public Service Announcement, here, but I recommend you ditch your SBC Global email account if you have one. Long story, but there's a good chance that (for weeks now) you're not getting email from some people. People like me. Even if I've written you many times before. And should you mention this to SBC they'll give you the runaround that it's being fixed. But it's not. 

And in some cases I have no other way to reach you so I'm getting very frustrated that SBC are such A*holes because I'm not going to attempt to figure out all the convoluted info they want me to fill out about my server and whatever else just so I can file a complaint and get my email through to you.

We now return you to the Flog, already in progress. 

Part One at the Daily Crosshatch.

UPDATE: And now, Part Two, as well.

Courtesy Dave Cooper: